August 27, 2004

On counting and throwing

For all the lively discussion set off by his forthcoming article in Science ("Numerical Cognition Without Words: Evidence from Amazonia", published online 19 August 2004), Peter Gordon deserves the thanks of everyone interested in human language, thought and culture. A bit of the discussion took place here on Language Log -- I suggested an analogy to a different skill, and Dan Everett sent a fascinating note reflecting on the issues from the perspective of his 27 years of working with the
Pirahãs.

Earlier today, Peter sent a response, which I'm happy to be able to present below.

Don't believe everything you read in the press. If you read the
Daily
Telegraph you will learn that I have been married to Dan Everett's
wife Keren for the last 20 years! Also, the glib headlines: "Whorf
was right!!!!!" screaming out are also less subtle than the primary
source. In the Science article, I first ask the question of whether
there are concepts that you cannot entertain as a consequence of the
language that you speak. I then allude to Whorfian theory at this
point --sorry Sapir, sorry Boas. This is actually the only place where
I mention Whorf in the paper, and I do not finish with some final
crescendo that "Whorf was right!" So, I distinguish between "weak
determinism" and "strong determinism", which is basically a
distinction that derives from John Lucy and that he essentially gets
from Brown and Lenneberg. The strong determinism question is
1. whether languages can be incommensurable (i.e., possess concepts
that are not intertranslatable), and 2.whether such incommensurability
can actually prevent you from entertaining such concepts. B&L
suggested that the latter cases would not exist because all languages
can express the same range of concepts only some do it more
efficiently. Apparently even Whorf believed this, so perhaps my
results are not supportive of Whorf in the end.

Mark Liberman asks basically whether it is language or
practice that is at stake here with his imagined example of the
non-throwing culture. Well, this question always comes up in some
form or another --usually just "how do you know that it isn't just
because they don't engage in counting that leaves them without number
concepts?" And here's how I think about this issue. First, as I say
in the article, one has to get a handle on what counts as an
interesting case. For example, the fact that the Piraha have no
concept of quark or molecule is not going to be an interesting case of
determinism. How do we draw the line? Well, basically, if someone
didn't know what a quark was, we would not question their command of
English, just their scientific knowledge. On the other hand, if you
ask some to give you 4 sticks, and they say "Uh what does "four"
mean?" then you would have some serious misgivings about their command
of English or the intactness of their parietal lobes.

So, let's imagine another Libermanesque culture (invent your
own name). It turns out that they make no distinction in their
language between definite and indefinite reference. So, we do a bunch
of experiments that show that they cannot get their minds around this
distinction either. The skeptic then replies: "Well, maybe it has
nothing to do with not having words like "the" and "a", but that they
just don't engage in making distinctions between definite and
indefinite reference, and that is where the causal structure lies, not
in the failure of the language to engage in such distinctions." It
seems to me that this is a pretty dumb argument because distinctions
between definite and indefinite reference are inextricably entwined
with language, and so to attempt to separate language and use is
pretty meaningless. No one claims that it is just the sounds of the
words that give you conceptual distinctions, it is their meanings and
how those meanings fit into culturally defined conceptiual systems of
interconnected knowledge.

Where does number fit into the continuum between
definiteness and quarks? I think it is closer to definiteness,
because the practice of counting is inextricably entwined with the
words (or signs) we use for number. Research in the development of
number ability suggests that we are born with the ability to exactly
perceive and represent 1 to 3 elements in memory without counting, and
that we can approximate larger numbers. This is precisely what you
see in the Piraha (sorry I can't generate a tilde on this crappy
computer in this trading post in the wilds of Maine where I am right
now). The thing that bootstraps you beyond the small-number exact
enumeration, into the realm of 4, 5 and to infinity and beyond, is the
language of number. There is no way to do this (at least within the
natural bounds of human experience) that does not involve some
symbolic representation of exact quantities.

If we now take Liberman's example of "throwing", the
parallels break down. Sure, you might question someone's knowledge of
English if they didn't know the the word "throw", but I must confess,
that I do not know the technical difference between a "lob" and a
"toss" and a "hurl" -- maybe the latter is a bit faster? It's a bit
like knowing that Elms are trees, but I would not bet more than 10
cents on my abiltity to identify one. It
seems to me that you could develop a very cognitively complex
representation of throwing distinctions by engaging in this act
without using language. For example, baseball batters develop the
ability to predict how a pitch is going to come by the configuration
of the pitcher as the ball leaves his hand. There is no vocabulary
for this, but is something that baseball batters develop. It's also
possible that having words for different kinds of throws could
(contrary to my own experience) engender some categorical perception
for different kinds of throws (move the arm below 20 degrees and it's
a "lob", above 20 degrees and it's a "toss"). So, in this case, the
language might be crucial. But this is all an empirical question
--it's why we do experiments.

My claim then is that because language is so intimately tied
to counting, it basically makes no sense to ask whether it's language
or counting that is important in acquiring exact numerical abilities.
Personally, I think that Whorf was wrong about many things he said. I
also think that the Piraha number case is just an existence proof for
incommensurability and, in the absence of further empirical inquiry,
should not be generalized beyond this case.

[email from Peter Gordon to Mark Liberman, 8/27/2004, for posting on Language Log]